"Ground scale / figure scale / terrain scale" Topic

Ok I am looking at 10mm figures and the rules state three constants I will use as a basis for my questions:

Infantry figures are on a 1"x3/4" base and represent around 70 men +-

Ground scale is 1 inch equals 25 yards

10mm figures are roughly N scale or 1:160

So I get the 1" frontage being 75' so about 2' per man, double ranked. The depth is a little (lot) large but I figure that is a thing we have to live with for using figures

But say I make a 10"x10" corn field. In "figure", or N, scale that's about 130', in ground scale it is 300 yards, or 900 feet. Do I make the terrain look like it is 130 and play it like it is 900?

Or a house? A small 1" square house is only 13' wide, barely bigger than an outhouse, yet represents 75' of playing surface. How do you reconcile these? Do you use a small house to represent a farm with outbuildings, like 1 figure represents 10?

Will a house represent one house or several? If several then 10mm or N scale will work. If only one house thenmaybe 6mm building will work better for the ground scale but not appearance.

It depends on the scale of the game. In your case if modeling a village I would probably use a bunch of 3mm scale buildings. Some will hate that the soldiers are taller than the houses. I hate calling "this house and outhouse represent Sharpsburg."

In the end you go with what looks good to you. You'll run into this with roads (in scale, or wide enough for a stand of troops to sit on?), water (in scale, or narrow enough for a bridge?), etc. etc.

Fences are another problem. An ACW battlefield needs them, but in some places they can be every 100 yards. That means fences every 4 inches for your game scale. So you need to build/own a load of fences, and they are a real pain in the ass to maneuver around during the game….

I would just do what looks right rather than worry too much about exact scaling. Most things on the wargame table are a fudge at the end of the day.

Ok I am looking at 10mm figures

Many gamers use "one size down" as a rule of thumb so 6mm buildings with 10mm figures.

What I am really trying to do is get the concepts down. Ground scale and figure scale are different and I need to fudge one or the other, or both a little?

Ground scale should stay fairly consistent. Unit bases should be in ground scale. So now you have two issues: terrain and figures. With most types of terrain you create an "area" and decorate to look nice. So a piece of cloth with ground cover is a forest. Then cover with model trees. Same can be done for swamps and towns. But your model scale will always be off. Buildings will in scale to models or themselves. You will almost never see terrain in scale to ground scale.

The are aoccupied by your terrain features should match those of the ground scale. So if a wood covered 750 yards, in your 1" = 25 yards ground scale it would be 30" long.

That would probably be a template covered in model trees. Same for a town. A template covered in small models.

I usually sub-scale my trees and buildings. 6mm works for many things, I use 6mm terrain with 15mm figures and vehicles, as some 6mm buildings are HUGE. You should be fine mixing 6mm terrain and 10mm figs.

The main thing to aim for is that the buildings are higher than the figures, it fools the eye into thinking everything is OK.

A single small building to represent farm complex is fine.

As Martin says – the area of the cornfield is Ground Scale, but the Vertical scale is relevant to the height of the figures, how ever you may well find largish 6mm looks fine.

We tend to underestimate the height of things. One guy put a tree on a table next to a 25mm figure. It was a lovely tree, but far too big (about a foot I think). We said so. He said he had done it to show how we underestimate- it was average height for a tree of that species. It just looked HUGE when you see it from "150 feet" up.

Extra Crispy, if the attrocious dinner (it included half-cooked rotten potatoes) that I had in Sharpsburg a few weeks ago is anything to go by, then I think that representing Sharpsburg by an outhouse would be entirely appropriate.

Jaxenro, with buildings, I prefer to go with the correct scale for the figures (6mm buildings with 6mm figures, 15mm buildings with 15mm figures, etc), as I think that it looks better. I do the same with all other types of terrain (ie make them the same scale as the figures).

There will always needs to be some compromises with ground scale, but I think that the key is to work out which buildings matter in scenario terms. If a building is there to represent a real building on the battlefield, but it is of no consequence to the scenario, then the building can be moved out of the way, as necessary. For buildings that do matter, you can place something to represent the built up area and then stick whatever buildings that you can appropriately fit on top. We use MDF for the built up area markers. It doesn't much matter if the footprint of the buildings that you put on the built up area marker are larger than the built up area marker, as you will likely need to move the buildings anyway to fight over the built up area.